Northern San Juan

Snowpack

Mark Gober · Nov 25, 2015 · Northern San Juan

Weather

There was as much sun as clouds today. Overall, a beautiful day except the winds did dramatically increase as the day wore on. By the time I was on the ridgeline (13k) it was honkin out there.

Snowpack

Dug a pit on a NE aspect near TL. It was 110cm deep with very few notable layers present. It gradually went from fist on the surface to 1F. Only at the bottom of the pack did it change notably, where the October snow was old and faceted (clusters), but there was no crust or failure plane. I could not get a CT or ECT test to fail. I nearly got blown away once I was above TL so I did not spend too much time digging around up there. There is little snow available for transport after the warm days we've had and the direction of the wind so wind loading is not a huge factor...but there may be some very thin wind slabs on northerly terrain by tomorrow. If we get some new snow along with these wind speeds then expect slabs to be forming on those northerlies.